Now See This
by LZClotho
Summary: flash fic inspired by the season 3 ep 1 promo... There be SwanQueen ahead in these waters… in this story, just a bit of UST (unresolved sexual tension) as Regina Mills gets a full long look at a sweating Emma Swan.


_flash fic ahead… Prompted by the OnceABC promo for season 3 ep 1…_

**Now See This**

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Emma Swan was frustrated. When she was frustrated to this level she needed to move. She'd gotten over her absolute flight response with more than a year in Storybrooke and that crazy journey to the Enchanted Forest, but sometimes a good jog could clear the head, y'know? Right now between dodging the daggers being glared between Snow and Regina because the former evil queen had made no bones about her disgust that Snow had let Henry out of her sight, and watching her father glare at the suggestively waggling eyebrows of their host, the pirate Captain Killian Jones, Emma really needed the fuck to evacuate.

But running around on a boat — a pirate ship, no less — was kind of useless. For one thing the lack of room, that whole long run off a short plank, or whatever. She headed down to the hold only to find no bags or barrels of supplies to push or throw around to work off her energy.

Hands on her hips, she leaned her head back, closing her eyes, counting to ten. It wasn't some zen thing, just a way to think. When she opened her eyes, however, a solution to her dilemma seemed to have magically appeared.

The infrastructure of a ship had never been something Emma Swan learned anything about, but that — right there —was a beam with some nice head space above it. She stepped forward, rolled her shoulders and reached up, pulling to test the beam's strength. It felt pretty sturdy. Her eyes darted along its length to where each end disappeared into the walls.

Experimentally she pulled herself off the ground with one arm, bending her knees and cautiously lifting her feet. She gave a quick bounce. The beam didn't flex in her hand and there was no ominous creaking suggesting an imminent break. She released herself with a thump of her boots back to the deck.

She threw off her pea coat and took herself down to her tank top, eager to work up a sweat.

Emma was just getting into a nice rhythm, triceps beginning to feel the burn, when she heard boots. Resolving to ignore whoever it was, she continued to flex and pull. If her grunts were a little louder, it was with the hope whoever it was would take the hint and leave her alone.

"What are you doing?" No such luck. Her watcher was Killian. The pirate captain sounded amused.

"Getting ready for a fight," she growled. She hoped he'd take the hint and go away. She had already punched his lights out once. And held a sword at his throat, and manacled him to a giant's gilded chair. She'd do it again.

No response came back, and after another few repetitions of her actions — the only way she was measuring time — she heard the boots moving away.

Emma exhaled and closed her eyes, continuing rhythmically to pull her chest up to, and chin over, the beam. She was sweating freely now, grit gathering under her neck, and the salty liquid sliding in unending rivulets down her forehead, cheeks, arms, and between her breasts.

The sound of boots returned. Emma grunted; damn, the man couldn't take a hint! She wrestled her head above the beam, feeling her straining muscles shaking her entire frame now.

Regina Mills had finally stalked away from Snow and her Charming, seeking a refuge where she could be alone with her utter sense of failure. She still blamed Snow and her hapless prince for losing Henry. If they'd been half as attentive to their grandson as they had professed, Greg and Tamara should never have been able to get him. But she had plenty of blame herself, and she had been learning to accept some of it thanks to her sessions with Archie.

She stopped walking at the sight in the dim corner of a room off the lower deck corridor. The sweat-soaked blond figure seemed to be wrestling with a beam in the ceiling. The muscles in the woman's arms were in sharp relief as she flexed them through the motions of lifting her body repeatedly off the floor. Regina was no stranger to exercise, but was more accustomed to it being performed in a setting specially built for such a thing. This approach seemed crude.

On the other hand, we are talking about Miss Swan, aren't we? Regina's curiosity piqued and passed by her own explanation, she started to turn on her heel and walk away in the direction she had come.

"Damn it, leave me the fuck alone!"

Regina spun back at the vitriolic outburst, ready to argue, as it always seemed with this woman.

She watched Emma's hand slip. The blonde's lean hard-muscled body slammed to the planks of the ship's deck with the resounding and wet slap of skin against wood. The vibrations shook the deck under Regina's feet, momentarily disrupting her awareness of the ship's gentle rocking.

Emma Swan's hands turned into fists and slammed twice into the deck, making Regina jump even as she saw the actions coming with the raising and lowering of Emma's sweat-streaked arms. Fingers went toward Emma's hair, presumably to pull the wet strands from her cheeks. Only, instead, those hands were suddenly fists against Emma's face.

Regina froze in place watching, aware of her discomfort but unable to retreat, as Emma Swan went under the tide of some emotional onslaught. Regina had an inkling what might be causing it, but that was a new sensation to her, a woman who had spent two lifetimes more worried about her own emotions than those of others.

She knew she shouldn't be there should Emma Swan turn around. The woman should be allowed her pain in private. Regina knew she would want that — no, she would demand that — if their positions were reversed.

But she found she couldn't move. She did flinch when Emma spun, hands splayed, pushing the blond woman to her knees then her feet in rapid succession.

Then it was like Emma ran into a wall. The blond gasped; green eyes, already reddened and overflowing with tears, widened and snapped over Regina's appearance head to toe and back to head again.

"Regina?" Emma's voice was high and strained. The muscles in the woman's shoulders bunched and rolled, the actions of a restrained fighter, or prisoner, she realized.

Regina's gloved hands flexed in her pea coat pockets, but she was certain she didn't want to bring her magic to bear. She still had the sense memory of Emma's magic twining with her own in the caverns under Storybrooke. The Savior's magic might be untrained, but it was pure and powerful.

Silence filled the space between the two women, crowding them more effectively than a million bodies. Both their distance, and their proximity, were noted, acknowledged tightly, and abandoned without comment.

Regina licked her lower lip cautiously. Her gaze traced a trickle of sweat that slipped from Emma's cheek to her heaving chest and then down until it vanished under the edge of her tank top covering swells tipped with hard points visible in relief through the ribbed fabric.

At the sight, Regina felt her mouth go dry. Then she did something she had never done before in her life: she retreated.

.


End file.
